We should keep in mind the old joke about bad marketing:
to determine the demand for a new bridge, go to the river
and count how many people swim across. The analogy is not
exact, but the spirit is similar.
Biologists may be able to suggest very interesting software
that they need. However, the most interest, from a computer
science viewpoint, lies in dreaming up algorithms or software
to compute things biolgists (or other scientists) never dreamed
could be done.
Computer scientists are the experts in determining what can be
automated, and they shouldn't forget to draw on that expertise
when selecting or creating new computational problems in biology
or any other science.
--
Raul E. Valdes-Perez valdes at cs.cmu.edu
Carnegie Mellon University (412) 268-7127